Healed with a Kiss. GINA WILKINS

kids at a tropical theme party, I had a hell of a time cleaning up afterward.”

      “No sand,” Alexis promised.

      He held her gaze for a moment, then nodded, turned and walked away with a mumble about needing to get back to work. His gait was marked by a very slight limp on the left side, which was more intriguing than detracting. As he disappeared around the side of the inn, Alexis made herself stop looking after him and spoke to his sisters. “I’ll try to keep the bride realistic with her expectations.”

      “I know you will,” Kinley said with a smile. “Don’t mind Logan, he’s just grouchy today. He and his crew are working long hours to get the grounds ready for spring plantings.”

      Alexis couldn’t help laughing. “He’s grouchy today?”

      Kinley smiled a bit sheepishly, while Bonnie grinned in acknowledgment that their brother wasn’t the jolliest soul even on the best of days. Logan wasn’t a jerk, Alexis mused. He was just bluntly candid and impatient with most social niceties. And yet during the past year she had seen him interacting kindly with children and senior citizens, politely if somewhat distantly with stressed-out brides and nervous grooms, and relaxed and easy with his small, hardworking, fiercely loyal grounds crew. She wouldn’t say he was all bark and no bite, exactly—he wasn’t quite that innocuous—but she’d worked with worse.

      As different as the Carmichael siblings were, they meshed amazingly well. They worked together every day at the inn they’d inherited from a great-uncle and had restored and reopened for business. Bonnie and Logan even lived full-time on the grounds; Bonnie in a two-bedroom, half-basement apartment; Logan in a cozy caretaker’s cottage downhill from the wedding gazebo. Alexis figured she would have long since strangled her younger brother, Sean, if they tried to go into business together.

      Kinley and Bonnie had both married during the past winter, since Alexis had first started working with them. Yet bringing new members into the fold had not seemed to affect the family dynamics, at least when it came to the interactions she had witnessed. She enjoyed watching the sisters and brother work together, putting their individual strengths into results that were always impressive.

      She was quite sure it would be interesting, as usual, to work with them on this newest project. She even looked forward to more spirited skirmishes with Logan, which always added a nice bit of spice to her workdays.

      * * *

      Darkness had fallen that evening when Alexis brewed a cup of hot tea in her cozy kitchen, only a few miles from Bride Mountain Inn. The days were getting a little longer as spring drew nearer. Already her work hours were increasingly busy with preparations for May and June, the craziest time of year in the wedding business. She wasn’t complaining about the workload. Having acquired Blue Ridge Celebrations just over a year ago, she was pleased to have seen a marked increase in bookings during the past months. She’d invested wisely in advertising, and had worked hard to make sure word-of-mouth endorsements from her clients were nothing but positive.

      For some reason, she found herself thinking back over the past as she carried her tea into the living room with her affectionate gray cat, Fiona, padding along beside her. Though she’d trained for a career in music and theater, she had worked in her mom’s Roanoke, Virginia, florist shop during her school years and later in shops in Maryland and New York, so she’d been quite familiar with weddings and other fancy events. She had always displayed a talent for event planning, enjoying that part of her jobs with florists. She’d spent quite a bit of time developing that skill during what had been supposed to be only supplemental work.

      A few months after her twenty-seventh birthday she’d acknowledged that she lacked the all-consuming passion required to become a major star on stage. She’d loved performing, and she’d worked very hard at perfecting her skills, but the lack of control over her own future had become more and more difficult to accept. After being passed over for an important role she’d come so close to obtaining—and coming to the abrupt realization that she wasn’t devastated by the rejection—she had found the courage to change her life course and go into business for herself.

      It hadn’t been easy to turn her back on the goal she’d had for so long. She’d walked away from her friends, her tiny but adorable city apartment and a tumultuous relationship that had left her ego bruised and her heart barricaded. It had been a terrifying, but ultimately liberating, move.

      Drawn back to her home state, she had purchased this established enterprise almost an hour’s drive from her mother’s still-thriving florist shop. Her natural talent for organization and creative thinking had come in handy in her new career, and she’d had considerable help from the previous owner and from a couple of employees who’d stayed with the company after the transfer.

      There had been a few glitches initially, a few minor missteps, but all in all Alexis was satisfied she’d made the right decision, despite her enthusiastic stage mother’s disappointment and concern. Now twenty-nine, she was independent and self-sufficient; she had established functional and strictly enforced boundaries with her family; she had a nice rented house she was considering buying, and several good friends. She even enjoyed a nondemanding, drama-free but physically exciting connection with a fascinating man who was no more interested than she was in the challenges of long-term romantic commitments. What more could a modern-day woman want?

      As if to accompany that thought, a brisk tap on the front door got her attention just as she set her steaming cup of tea on the low table in front of the couch. Along with the knock came a scrabbling sound on the front porch that she recognized easily enough.

      “Sounds as though we both have company,” she said to her cat, who stared at the door with eagerly perked ears. “They’re a little early. Think they were impatient to see us?”

      She smoothed her hands over the pink knit top and faded jeans she’d changed into after arriving home from work only an hour earlier. Her dark hair hung loose around her shoulders, but she merely shook it back rather than fussing with it. She was barefoot, but didn’t bother donning shoes as she moved across the room. It was nice to know she could be entirely herself with this particular visitor, whom she had been expecting tonight. Already her pulse had increased in pleasurable anticipation as she reached to open the door.

      Logan Carmichael stood on her doorstep, his characteristically stern face illuminated by the yellow bulb in her porch light fixture. Beside him, a massive black-and-brown dog made a husky, deep-chested sound that some might have interpreted as a growl.

      Logan jerked his chin toward the rottweiler-mix dog. “He begged to come with me tonight. He sulked that I left him home the last couple of times. Hope it’s okay.”

      Smiling, Alexis moved back out of the doorway. She knew quite well the dog’s grumbly rumble was merely his unique way of greeting people he liked, his own version of a cat’s purr. “Ninja is always welcome here,” she said, motioning for them to come inside. “Fiona, you have a visitor.”

      Ninja headed straight for the gray cat, who leaped onto the couch to better greet the big dog. Alexis was no longer even bemused when her pet rubbed affectionately against Ninja’s head, triggering a new spate of rumbling from the dog’s broad chest and a frantic wagging of his tail. Someone had forgotten to tell the silly creatures that they were supposed to be sworn enemies. They had become great pals instead over the past five months. Odd, yes, but Alexis figured it was no more surprising than her own very private friendship with Logan.

      Logan closed the door, shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it over a chair. He reached out then to wrap his hand around the back of her head and tug her closer, his hazel eyes glinting with a rare, slow smile. “Is Ninja the only one welcome here?”

      She rested her right hand on his solid chest, feeling his heart beating a bit rapidly beneath her palm and relishing the knowledge that she elicited that response from him. Slipping off her glasses with her left hand, she smiled up at him through her lashes, openly flirting, comfortable with touching him and yet highly stimulated by the contact. “I suppose it’s okay if you accompany him occasionally.”

      He chuckled, his warm breath brushing her lips